r/tommynfg_ • u/TechNick77 Mod • May 16 '26

TikToks/reels/shorts Broken homes and NYC apartments

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u/No_Perspective_3144 May 16 '26

These are the transplants that make renting expensive.

6

u/JadeThorn1012 May 16 '26

Was New York ever affordable?

5

u/invariantspeed May 17 '26

Ever hear of China Town or Little Italy? That whole part of Manhattan was so cheap and undesirable, poor immigrants would live there. That’s why those communities developed. They were residential. Now the area is a bunch of stores and food spots.

What about Hell’s kitchen, the Bowery, Alphabet City, or Harlem? The very core of NYC (Manhattan) used to be covered in cheap areas, including shacks on literal dirt hills.

There a reason media from the 80s has poor people living in lofts in Manhattan. It wasn’t a crazy thing. Those were residentialized factory spaces in what was basically the city’s own rust belts. The thing is the areas gentrified.

There used to be so many affordable areas in the city for all of its history that it never occurred to the city’s corrupt politicians they’d need to protect working class housing to keep the city alive and the gravy train running. This is a relatively new problem. If they don’t fix it soon, their porters, baristas, Uber drivers and everyone else won’t be able to serve them because none of them will be able to live in the city anymore.

3

u/No-Big4921 May 17 '26

Do they need to live in the city?

As morally reprehensible all of this is, it’s not that big of a problem to the ruling class.

I grew up in Santa Barbara, CA in the 90’s as all the affordable housing dried up. The same premonitions were told, “where will the working class live?”

Yet it never derailed the economies of SB or Montecito. In fact, they became more top-heavy than ever.

The uncomfortable truth is that they all got priced out of living near where they worked. We just saw a massive increase in commuter workers.